


my teeth in your heart

by pr_scatterbrain



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, M/M, The city of Rome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:49:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27175468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pr_scatterbrain/pseuds/pr_scatterbrain
Summary: Sidney has been in Rome for three weeks when he first feels it.It isn’t anything specific. Nothing he could name.But it’s there.-There is a wolf hunting Sidney.
Relationships: Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin
Comments: 22
Kudos: 106
Collections: Sid/Geno Spooky Fest 2020





	my teeth in your heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eyeslikeonyx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyeslikeonyx/gifts).



> To eyeslikeonyx - I've always loved your writing and I hope you like my take on your werewolf/college prompt. It's not quite what you asked for, but I hope you enjoy it nevertheless (there was one mad moment where I debated writing a college au set in the Renaissance. Thankfully my beta talked me out of it, but not out of setting it in my favourite city, Rome). Sending you all the best wishes <3
> 
> Thank you to the amazing mods who organised this exchange. It’s so wonderful to have people like you in this fandom; you bring us together and enrich our entire community especially in times like this. Thank you for your generosity!

_This year will take from me_

_the hardened person_

_who I longed to be._

_I am healing by mistake._

_Rome is also built on ruins._

Eliza Griswold, from 'Ruins.'

_Tell me the story_

_again,_

_of the sparrows who flew from falling Rome,_

_their blazed wings._

_How ruin nested inside each thimbled throat_

_& made it sing _

Ocean Vuong, from 'Seventh Circle of Earth'

Sidney has been in Rome for three weeks when he first feels it. 

It isn’t anything specific. Nothing he could name. 

But it’s there. 

There are sirens at night. They sound different here than Sidney is used to. When he first arrived in Rome they would wake him every time. Yet time makes the unfamiliar familiar. Even himself. Or maybe it’s the other way around. He isn’t sure how many people would recognise him now, though Kris does when they meet for coffee before Sidney’s first class. 

From the other side of the Piazza Navona, Kris raises a hand to wave. Dressed in a pale cream linen suit, his hair is pushed away from his face by his dark glasses. Even in the bustle of the coffee bar, there is a sense of ease to him. As the face of the youngest generation of the Letang family, this city was always going to belong to him. 

Kris has ordered for Sidney again.

“I don’t want to hear you attempt to speak Italian,” he says before Sidney can complain. 

He’s a dick. 

But so is Sidney. So he doesn’t hesitate. 

“Strong words said with a Quebecois accent,” he tells Kris, accepting the expresso. 

Kris grins. 

He has the right name but an accent inherited from his French Canadian mother. It’s a sticking point. Or it would be for anyone else. 

They became friends during their undergrad. It’s been a while since then. There were a couple of years where they lost touch. But he still picked up when Sidney called; both the phone and their friendship. If it could even be called that. Neither of them were ever particularly good at it. Not when Kris was the asshole sleeping his way through a degree he didn’t need and Sidney was the naive idiot who went from the ivy league to the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School. 

They were both idiots. They probably still are. 

Only now Sidney’s less than remarkable military career is over, and he’s in Rome to do his post-grad at The British School and Kris is a - honestly Sidney doesn’t know what Kris does, only that he works for his family. Given his family are the Letang’s, it’s something in international finances and banking. It’s a field that, in one way or another, his family have dominated since the fifteenth century. Where most of the great Italian families have disappeared, they held onto their status. Now only the sticklers, or maybe the Colonna’s, would call them new money.

They are meeting early in the day, before the heat becomes too intense. It’s not yet nine but Sidney’s shirt is clinging to his back.

Summer in Rome is a humid heat that builds unrelentingly week by week. The sun bares down on the city, heating every marble block, stone step, and asphalt street. There is no escape from it. Not in the city. It’s why Kris and his family leave it. A few centuries ago his ancestors did the same thing. The villeggiatura of today is not too much different to that of the Renaissance. Not for someone like Kris. 

“I still don’t see why you can’t come to the hills with us,” Kris says. 

“It’s the start of the term,” Sidney reminds him.

Kris rolls his eyes. “The summer term. No one stays in Rome during the summer.” 

Sidney will. He says that. 

“You can write about the frescoes at our villa in Frascati,” Kris says, but he isn’t looking at Sidney. 

It’s rude, Sidney thinks vaguely. 

What kind of bad habits does Sidney have?

It depends who is asking and who is telling. 

Situated in the beating heart of the city is the Palazzo Latang. The earliest parts date from the fifteen century, but the majority of it was constructed during the seventeenth. The product of Borromini and Bernini, the Palazzo Letrang wasn’t so much a collaboration between two of the greatest Baroque architects and artists, but a fracterous competition. As a result there is an electric tension caught in the stone and mortar. A contradiction given form.

It has been the main seat of the Letang family for nearly twenty generations. Twice a month it is open to the public, but Sidney has keys that Kris presses into the palm of his hand before he leaves. 

“Don’t burn it down,” Kris says. 

“Fuck you,” Sidney says.

In the cool, darkened entrance, the city feels very far away. His voice carries in the space, bouncing off marble and stone. 

“If you change your mind -” Kris says. 

Sidney nods, and says he knows which saves Kris from having to say the unsaid. 

The Palazzo Letang is vast. It could swallow Sidney whole. 

Spread over three levels and containing an underground grotto, it’s almost aggressive. Originally the palazzo was smaller, but as the Letang family grew in wealth and influence, they devoured their neighbourhood one villa at a time. Even today, there are unfinished edges on each side of the palazzo, as if waiting for the chance to expand another block. 

Inside the palazzo is sublime. Light illuminates and shadow falls like the blade of a knife. Everywhere Sidney looks, there is beauty. Yet when he closes his eyes, everything is still. 

It is strange to think Kris grew up within these walls.

It is stranger still to think Sidney is standing here now. Of all the places he could be, he is here. 

Of all the masterpieces of art and architecture within the palazzo, the most famous is also the most mysterious. Within the third floor in the Braccio Nuovo gallery, there is a fresco that gave the Palazzo its name. Not the official name, but the one Romans use. _Palazzo Lupi._ The gallery itself is not open to the public. There are a few black and white photographs of it available. A handful of academic texts. They all discussed and dissected the same photographs of the remarkable fresco. Before coming to Rome, Sidney had read as many as he could get his hands on.

Known simply as the _Lupercal_ fresco, it’s authorship has been hotly contested. For the last decades many have attributed it to Pietro da Cortona. The timing would work. There are records in the Papal archives. (There may be unpublished ones in the Letang libraries. Sidney hasn’t even begun to look). In the majority of the texts, it’s understood as a depiction of the foundation myth of Rome. The story of the she-wolf who suckled the abandoned twins who would go on to found the city. In person, it is far more complex. 

Sidney doesn’t think it’s about Romulus and Remus being at all. He doesn’t think it’s like anything of the period. If anything, it is more akin to the _Painted Garden_ of the Villa di Livia, painted for Livia Drusilla, the wife of the Emperor Augustus. Like the _Painted Garden_ , the _Lupercal_ fresco is a continuous nature painting that fills the space. Yet it is not a glorious summer panorama; nor is it a cultivated garden of figs and pomegranates, flowers and delicately rendered birds. It is perhaps the opposite. 

It is a hunting scene.

Set under a nebulous night sky, it is all lush greens, deep ultramarine blues, vermilion red - and black wolves with gold eyes that glitter like jewels. Wolves that stare down at Sidney from on high, and follow him as he moves around the echoing space.

Sidney is in Rome to research and write his thesis on the Letang fresco. 

That is the truth. 

But Sidney is a liar. 

Without the structure and discipline of the military, Sidney has to make his own routines. There is nothing in his hands or stuck in the gullet of his throat anymore. His body is unreliable. He can’t trust himself. He learnt that. It is not something that can be forgotten. It’s not something that can be forgiven either. 

So. Routines. 

Sidney runs in the morning. He runs and he runs. Block after block, before the sun rises. 

At the Quattro Fontane he pauses to check his heart rate. Standing in the middle of the empty road, he listens to the water lapping against the four marble fountains around him. From one, a wolf stares out at him. Rendered in marble and nestled in an oak tree, her ears are pricked. Listening, even now. 

Rome is a wolf city. 

It always has been. It always will be. 

Everyone knows this.

Sidney wants to - god, he doesn’t know. 

It was never like this before. A year ago he had captain stripes and was well on track for his next promotion. He had purpose. He had a five year plan. God. He had a ten year plan. 

It’s just before midnight in Pittsburgh. The last time he heard from his Gunnery Sergeant, Duper was training down there with the rest of Sidney’s old unit. He’d probably still be up. If not him, Jordy and Talbo definitely would be. But - Duper’s last message was a while ago. They could be anywhere now.

And Sidney - 

Under his fingertips, his pulse thrums, but he’s lost count. 

Pushing himself into motion, he makes himself keep going.

(This is/was the story: Sidney keeps going until he can’t.) 

Sidney’s not the oldest in his post-graduate program. But he’s older than most. 

A private philanthropic consortium awarded him a generous grant to come to Rome, but Sidney doesn’t fool himself. His academic curriculum vita isn’t remarkable. For the last few years the only thing he wrote were mission reports. The truth is simple. The Letang name opens doors. However they do not open doors. Sidney's open invitation to live and study onsite was unprecedented. In consequence certain arrangements were made, and rules were bent in order to facilitate his place at The British School.

In the darkness of the lecture hall, Sidney blinks as his professor flicks through slides. Marble made into flesh; the soft shimmering gold nimbus’; the five petal rose. Names and faces; iconography and iconology. The sweeping grandeur of the Renaissance as it came into full bloom and transitioned into the glory of the Baroque. 

“Bud, bloom, decay,” Sergei Gonchar, their professor, says. “Or so Johann Winckelmann would claim. Though this analogy was rejected by Heinrich Wölfflin.”

Turning to the screen, he moves on to the next set of slides. They come thick and fast. Click, click, click; the old slide carousel whirls through them at Gonch’s command. One of them is of the Annibale Carracci fresco at the Palazzo Letang, which snakes around the Scala Regia that Sidney walked down that morning. But Sidney doesn’t register it.

Sidney’s breathing is slow. Keeping his head down, he concentrates on his notes and lets the colours wash over him.

After class breaks up, a few classmates invite him to have coffee with them. 

Beau is American. Olli is Finnish. They are both startlingly young. Young in a way Sidney can’t ever remember being. Brilliance comes easy to them, and they take pleasure in it. As they walk, they compare lecture notes. 

They don’t go far. Just a student place. A cafe like a cafeteria; Olli buys lunch and Beau smokes. 

They sit outside. 

In the open, Sidney feels himself react as if from outside himself. With his back against the wall, he can only listen while they carry most of the conversation. Occasionally Olli asks his opinion or for his thoughts, once Beau offers him a cigarette. It is a kindness of sorts. Sidney doesn’t know what to do with it. 

Afterwards, Sidney walks back to the Palazzo Letang on the other side of the Tiber River. It’s late in the day. He should take the bus. It’s stupid really, to be pushing himself. The high humidity makes it difficult to keep track of his hydration levels. Dry heat bakes, but Roman summers swelter. He’s backpack is heavy; sweat gathers along his spine. When he stops to refill his water bottle at one of the public fountains, the skin of his forearms is red. It stings when he lets the icy water overfill his bottle and spill down his arms. 

The city surrounds him. 

There is something in the corner of his eye. 

It has been there for days.

The following day, Sidney sets up lights and cameras in the Braccio Nuovo gallery, but as many times as he tries, he can’t quite capture the _Lupercal_ fresco on film. 

It is as if the wolves are hiding.

After a couple of infuriating hours, he gives up. 

As a class, they take an excursion to do some onsite work at the Chiesa di Sant' Ignazio di Loyola. The 17th-century Roman Catholic church is unspeakable. Space and volume twist out, but only come into true perspective when Sidney stands on the marble disk set into the middle of the nave floor. It is only then, Andrea Pozzo’s Trompe-l'œil plays out. The illusion is near perfect. 

They all take turns at it. 

When Sidney steps forward, he makes himself breath. A steady inhale and exhale that he counts, just like he was trained. Above him angels tumble from the sky, glorious and golden and chaotic in their raptures. Sidney has seen it in books, in slides. 

“Aren’t you going to look?” Gonch asks from behind Sidney. 

Sidney exhales. He almost laughs. 

It hurts, sometimes, to look at anything for too long. Or anyone. 

It’s something he swallows. Again and again. He should be able to do it easily. He’s had more than enough practice. But when he tilts his head back, something in his throat clicks and his eyes begin to water. Pozzo’s angels are all looking at him. Their bodies are filled with light with their wings beating in the cloud filled sky Pozzo captured. At the centre of everything, the sky has broken apart and heavenly light spills out. Abstractly, Sidney knows it is beautiful. 

The back of Sidney’s neck prickles. 

He makes himself focus on Pozzo’s creation; on the trick of it. The Trompe-l'œil was created later than the Letang’s _Lupercal_ fresco but Sidney’s supervisor has been encouraging Sidney to study it. However it is difficult to concentrate on the quadratura fresco. 

“This is a wolf city,” Gonch says later, when they are sitting outside waiting for the rest of the class.

He would know. He is one. 

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Gonch asks. 

Sidney looks out across the piazza. The shadows are growing long. There are a few pigeons scattered about. Through his shoes he can feel the baked in heat radiate up from the marble steps. It doesn’t go away, not even at night. They're in the middle of a heat wave. Earlier that day he spotted one or two of the more daring tourists climbing into the fountains.

Combing his fingers through his hair, Sidney absently tracks the locals. It’s easy to pick them out of the crowd of tourists. He lets his eyes settle in the way they move; the pace of their steps and the way they hold themselves. It’s an old habit. One born from necessity. He doesn’t know if he will ever be able to stop. 

“He won’t hurt you,” Gonch says. 

Sidney wants to laugh. In his neatly ironed button down shirt he looks respectable, but it’s just a shirt. 

There is ink smudged into the whorls of his fingertips. Before that, it was dust and blood.

There is a wolf hunting Sidney. 

But Sidney isn’t quarry. 

The sirens wake Sidney again. 

After the third time he gives up. In the darkness he pads through the halls with only the flashlight on his phone to guide him. He doesn’t need it. There were floorplans in the books Sidney had read before he came to Rome. Photos too. Kris had given Sidney a tour but he hadn’t needed it. He could have found his ways to the galleries blind folded. 

At night, the wolves' eyes glow. 

Sitting down on the chilly marble floor, Sidney lets himself look. He lets his eyes adjust and as they do the wolves almost appear to creep out of the lush forest. Soon they surround Sidney, and as they close in on him, he lets himself lay back; exposing his belly, his throat. 

The weight of his body grounds him. 

He is here. Only here.

“Are you sleeping?” Kris says, when he calls. 

It’s late. 

Or early. 

“Are you?” Sidney asks.

(When Sidney was young, he used to dream when he slept.

But that was a long time ago.)

In the morning, Sidney’s neck ache and his knees click when he stands. Somehow, against all reason, he fell asleep. Rays of golden light spill in through the far windows. It slowly tracks across the marble, and breaks into shards when it touches the candelabras which stand either side of the arched passageway. The cut glass makes shimmering colours dance along the fresco, and when Sidney looks up it is as if the wolves have retreated. The line of his spine protests when he leans his head back to try to get a closer look.

He gives up. Or gives in. 

Yawning, Sidney tries to comb his fingers through his knotted hair. He needs a cut. He needs breakfast. He needs a lot of things. Instead, in the private palazzo gardens, he picks ripe oranges from one of the decades old trees. Barefoot and dressed only in an old pair of cotton boxers, the juice drips down his wrist as he pulls the rind apart and bites into the flesh. 

Inside of him, his heart beats and his head is quiet. 

There isn’t much left of him. That’s the secret. That’s the loose thread he doesn’t want anyone to pull. If he was someone once, he can’t remember. On days like this all he has left is muscle memory. He wants to sleep for days. Weeks. Months. He would if he could. But he can’t sleep. 

He shouldn’t skip class, but he does.

One of his tutors is working on an open dig site up in the Palatine Hills, near the site of the Roman Forum. Marc-André Fleury is easy to spot, but Sidney hears him first. His laughter carries. There is something reflective about his joy, and as Sidney presents his student ID to the site director, Flower sees him. 

Unlike Kris, there is no untouchable elegance to him. Just dirt under his fingernails and a snag in the collar of his v-neck. 

“You have come on a good day,” Flower tells Sidney. 

He says that every time. 

The dig Flower is working on is just a few meters from the Lapis Niger. It is a subterranean site, and as Sidney jumps down into it the air is muggy and almost heavy. The ground here was first broken in the late 1800s. At the time, a tomb rumoured to be connected to Romulus was discovered in a hypogeum. The underground temple was covered in the 1930s, as many archeological sites in Rome were. Now it has been unearthed. 

Given the location and connection to the cult of Romulus, the site is extensively monitored. 

Flower can only take Sidney within sight of the newly discovered inscription. 

“We are on sacred ground,” Flower translates. 

There is weight to his words. The first wolves speaking once more. In the low light, Flower’s eyes glow bright and his hands unconsciously reach for the claw marks scored into the tufa stone like an echo of an ancestor separated by centuries. 

Sidney’s goes still. Still, but on alert. 

It’s some kind of instinct. Sidney knows that. He can recognise it. Flight, fight, or freeze. 

His body is unreliable. Sidney knows that too. 

But when Flower turns, he must see something in Sidney. Outside in the blistering sunlight, Flower hands Sidney his canteen of chilled water. 

“It’s nothing,” Sidney says.

Flower doesn’t listen. 

“Drink,” he says.

In the distance, Sidney sees -

“Do you know that wolf?” Flower asks, openly turning to face the via della Curia. 

There are two answers Sidney could give. But he is a human in a wolf city. He cannot give either. Not without sounding stupid.

He gives a third, shrugging.

When Sidney stops to buy lunch on the way back from visiting Flower, he feels the back of his neck prickle. Holding himself steady, he does not flinch. That was long since trained out of him. 

The wolf has never before dared to come so close. 

Sidney can feel him; maybe a few paces behind him. Maybe waiting at the end of the time. Exhaling slowly, Sindey manages to smile at the waiter when he places his order. He does not look backwards. There is something inside Sidney’s throat. It pushes against his gullet. He swallows, but it is still there. 

Vaguely he had thought about going to the library, but changing course, Sidney lets himself wander through Rome. He lets himself leave the wide, beautiful and open piazzas. He lets himself strays from the path he has made over the past weeks. 

There are moments where the distance between them increases, others where it closes. 

What is Sidney doing? 

Something stupid.

It wouldn’t be the first time. 

Sidney is a stranger in this city. He knew every road, every place, in Bagdad. What blind spots he had were covered by the men in his unit. But it is a Sunday. The sun is above Sidney’s head and it’s only minutes until the Angelus is held. It is a pretty thing, almost, to go from the narrow streets into the sunlight and the crush of bodies in St Peters Square. 

Outside himself, Sidney notes his breathing change. 

His body amongst other bodies; made human as he shifts through them. 

Here speed is countered by agility. Sidney does not need to make up ground, when the currents of the crowd reset the day. 

What is Sidney doing? 

He does not know. 

What Sidney can never forget; the only truth he was left with -

Sidney is a liar.

When Sidney gets to the Palazzo Letang, he is alone and his ears ring when he closes the door behind him. In the silence, the sounds of his beating heart echoes. Adrenalin floods his veins and he feels flushed with it. 

The stone floor is cool under foot. 

Outside, in the gilded hallways leading to the room he was given, he strips. 

It feels like sacrilege. 

There were Letang Cardinals, a Pope too, back in the sixteen hundred. 

There are stories of what they did here, in their palace. 

Maybe this is another. 

The scarring across Sidney’s side pulls unevenly when he pulls his shirt over his head. Unbuckling his belt, Sidney feels sweat drips from his hair down the line of his spine. Naked under the golden light he does not flinch when he catches sight of his reflection. His eyes are dilated and his body is slick with sweat.

In the shower, the cool water helps. Leaning his head against the tiles, he lets the water beat over his muscles and wash away the dirt and grime of the chase. It is only when he tries to pick up the bar of soap, he realises his hands are trembling.

He is exhausted when he gets out of the shower and lays down in his bed. His damp hair getting the pillows all wet. Pressing his face into the sheets, Sidney closes his eyes. It is only then, is he able to catch his breath.

There is a knock on the door on Saturday morning.

When Sidney opens the door, it is to a dark eyed man. 

There is a moment where Sidney’s breath catches. 

“You do not know me,” he says, before introducing himself as Evgeni. “Maybe call me Geno.”

“Geno,” Sidney repeats, testing the name. 

The way he says it makes Evgeni smile. As he does, his face changes. His features shift, and come together in an unexpected way. He is not handsome. Not like Kris, who could have stepped out of one of Titian’s portraits or the pages of _Vogue Hommes_. Evgeni is something else, and Sidney leans against the doorframe. 

A name for a face; it is a trade. 

“Did you come to see the Palazzo?” Sidney asks. “The tours were yesterday.” 

“Too bad.”

That is not an answer. 

But that was not the right question. 

Sidney opens the door and inside Evgeni steps. He does not hesitate to cross the threshold. Their bodies brush. Up close Evgeni towers over Sidney. 

There is a wolf hunting Sidney. 

But Sidney is a hunter too.

“Maybe you can tell me about the art,” Evgeni says, but he isn’t looking at the Artemisia Gentileschi oil painting that takes up the entire length of the grand entrance room. 

It is a pretty sort of flattery. 

It is no hardship. Sidney can recite dates, events, and the names of all the artists involved in the creation of the Palazzo. He can even make it into a cohesive narrative of his own, rather than an echo of the tour guides that the Letang family employs. 

In the golden light Evgeni is beautiful, Sidney thinks. 

A sweeping line of long limbs and dark eyes. His mouth is soft and his shirt is unbuttoned enough that Sidney can follow the line of his throat to the dip of his collarbones. 

“Can I show you something?” Sidney asks. 

Inside his chest, his heart is steady. 

He feels pinned though, when Evgeni looks at him. 

“Something?” Evgeni asks. 

Sidney nods. 

And Evgeni follows Sidney closely up the staircase. He moves soundlessly. 

He is quiet, when Sidney takes him into the gallery. 

He tilts his head back, and looks at the fresco. It is an act of arrogance. Vaguely Sidney recognises that. An alpha wolf, an apex predator, showing his throat to a human. Not bothering to guard himself - not even when he has allowed himself to be trapped.

“I’m writing a thesis about this,” Sidney tells him.

“Oh?” Evgeni says. 

“Most people think it's about the Foundation of Rome.” 

“And you?”

“It’s not about Romulus and Remus,” Sidney tells him. “It’s a hunt.”

“A hunt? You think the wolves are after the humans?”

“No, they’re hunting each other.” 

At this, Evgeni smiles. He doesn’t even try to hide it. 

“Are you afraid?” Evgeni asks. 

His head is still tilted back, following the narrative as the wolves with jewelled eyes leap through the endless landscape. 

“No,” Sidney says, and he watches Evgeni smile. 

He was. Not here, not now. Before. Not during. Not now. 

All roads lead to Rome. 

Sidney was always going to come here. He was always going to meet Evgeni here.

“Should I be afraid?” Evgeni asks. 

He sounds only vaguely curious. 

Sidney looks at him; at the long lines of his limbs, the strength in his shoulders and the easy confidence with which he holds himself. Even now, he doesn’t see it. 

Sidney wants to laugh.

There is a monster in this room, but it isn’t Evgeni. 

That is the unvarnished truth. The one Sidney knows deep and indisputable in his gut. While wearing the uniform of a soldier, Sidney left a swath of destruction in his wake under the guise of peacekeeping. He was prestigious. There are stories about him. He’s called a hero in most of them. There are medals in boxes somewhere in his parents garage.

Yes. Yes, Evgeni should be afraid. Yet he is not, and he smiles at Sidney when he shows Evgeni out. 

“Thank you,” he says.

Rome is full of ruins. 

Sidney’s nothing remarkable in comparison to them. Just a body, just a collection of scars and regrets. 

Just a rusty knife. As long as no one comes too close, he can’t cause anymore damage.

That night Sidney finds himself laying down under the _Lupercal_ fresco yet again. Half asleep, half awake, he stares up at the fresco. The wolves are in full flight, racing through the forest. Sidney watches as they circle around him; and he stays still as they draw closer and closer.

Kris sounds wide awake when Sidney calls. He answers, like he always does. In the background Sidney can hear music and laughter.

“Why’d you always answer when I call?” Sidney asks. 

It is awful and unfair to ask. They don’t do this. They never have. That’s not the type of friends they are. 

On the other end of the line, Kris exhales.

“Because it’s you calling,” Kris tells him. 

Bring up his free hand, Sidney covers his eyes. He wants to hang up. He wants to take back everything. But Kris isn’t finished. It’s an eye with an eye with him. It always has been. He is a Letang after all. Bloody and brutal and terrible in his kindness. 

“You’d do the same for me.” 

And Sidney would. For better or worse, he would. He has.

It is not a surprise when Evgeni returns. 

This time at dusk a few days later. In hand is a bottle of wine. 

“A gift, for showing me the fresco.” he says. “And an apology”

There is a gold ribbon tied around the neck of the bottle. An offering of sorts.

The days are long in summer. In the middle of a heatwave, Sidney is half dressed in shorts and a cotton shirt. The sleeves are pushed up his forearms, and when he reaches to take the bottle he catches Evgeni glance at the scars. 

“Shrapnel,” Sidney explains he pours them a drink. 

When they go out into the garden, Sidney wonders if Evgeni will ask, but he does not.

The sky is cloudless and the edges are beginning to colour pink and orange. They sit under the orange trees and for a little while Evgeni leads the conversation. There is something remarkably clever about him, Sidney thinks as he listens. He is an athlete; he tells Sidney. Normally he lives on the other side of the world.

“Why did you come here?” Sidney asks.

“I want to know you,” 

“You shouldn’t,” Sidney tells him. “You won’t.” 

Evgeni’s dark eyes are soft. For a moment it looks like he wants to reach for Sidney, but he doesn’t. Around them the sun is setting. In the last of the daylight Evgeni is painted as masterly as any of the grand portraits inside the palazzo. More, maybe, given how fleeting Sidney knows the moment is. 

When Sidney takes their wine glasses to the kitchen, Evgeni follows. Taking the glasses from Sidney’s hands, he washes them in the sink. There is something about him and the way he fills the space. Sidney can’t take his eye off him.

It’s unfamiliar. 

In his undergrad Sidney had slept with Kris one time. It hadn’t been particularly good. Then towards the end of his last disastrous tour, Duper had jerked Sidney off while they were lying in the graves they had dug out. That wasn’t so much about sex as it was about letting him share some of the burden Sidney carried on his shoulders as their unit’s Captain. 

This feels completely different. 

Moving close, Sidney watches Evgeni go still as he feels Sidney’s breath against the back of his neck. Cautiously, Sidney places a hand on Evgeni’s waist and leans close. Pressing his mouth against the cotton of his shirt in an echo of a kiss, Sidney closes his eyes. Through the cotton, he feels the heat of Evgeni’s skin and the shift of his muscles. 

“Sid,” Evgeni says, wrecked. 

His voice is quiet, barely more than a whisper.

In the darkness, Sidney leads Evgeni back to the _Lupercal_ fresco. Hand in hand they walk through the endless palazzo, until they reach the Braccio Nuovo gallery. Even in pitch black, there is a hint of iridescence; Evgeni’s eyes and those of the wolves waiting for him. 

When Sidney lights the candelabrum, the wolves are all there waiting for them. 

The velvet sky glitters with stars and the ever changing phases of the moon mapped out in arches of silver and gold. When it was first painted, it must have been a mirror of the night sky outside the windows of the palazzo. Now there are so many lights, it’s hard to see the stars in Rome, but Sidney wouldn’t know. He can’t see past Evgeni. 

He watches as Evgeni wanders, joining in the chase with the rest of the pack. 

“You used to dream,” Evgeni says, when he looks away from the forest surrounding them. 

His eyes are dark when he looks at Sidney, and his mouth is soft. 

Sidney did. But that was a long time ago. 

“Do you remember?” he asks. 

That is the wrong question to ask Sidney, but Evgeni can’t know that. He can’t, but he is looking at Sidney with such depth of unspoken emotion. First it was his bared neck, and now it is his beating heart laid out between them. It is impossible to meet his gaze, and yet Sidney can’t look away.

“You were hunting me,” Sidney finds himself saying.

“Yes,” Evgeni says, turning to look at Sidney.

Instinct isn’t an excuse. Sidney knows that. Not for wolves or humans. He says that. 

He watches Evgeni. It is important. 

After a beat, Evgeni nods. Sidney exhales. 

Later, Sidney takes Evgeni to his room. 

In the unmade bed, Evgeni curls close. Lacing his fingers through Sidney’s, he rests his head on Sidney’s shoulder. 

“Do you believe in fate?” Evgeni asks quietly. 

Sidney -

“No.” 

Evgeni’s mouth twitches against Sidney’s skin. “Liar.”

He isn’t even looking at Sidney when he says it. It is a direct hit. A blind goal. 

Sidney should hate him for his arrogance, instead he brings their joined hands to his mouth and kisses Evgeni’s palm.

.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from this line in Euripides, _Medea_ :
> 
> Medea: _Tell me,  
>  How does it feel with my teeth in your heart?_
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome and appreciated. 
> 
> Find/follow me on [tumblr](http://www.pr-scatterbrain.tumblr.com) if you want <3


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